Gin turned slightly, finally taking note of the newcomers seated beside Iwaizumi and Tabaki. He was amused not just by their cloaked presence, but by the subtle shift in atmosphere they brought. Something was different now. The crowd around them roared to life, cheers swelling as the lights dimmed and the spotlight hit the center of the arena. The show was about to begin.
Amid the growing noise, Gin leaned slightly toward Jiro. "By the way, Mr. Jiro," he asked casually, watching the audience rise to their feet in anticipation, "how exactly does someone win one of these fights?"
Jiro grinned, eyes still on the Hexadome. "Simple," he said. "You either knock your opponent out… or send them flying out of the dome."
The APEX RING erupted.
A roaring sea of fans shook the glass walls, their cheers rising like thunder. Light trails danced across the sky like electric veins. Even gravity seemed to bend for the show.
Inside the ring, two fighters clashed in high-resolution chaos blurs of movement, soaked in Pulse energy.
"WHOOOAA! WHAT A MOVE FROM FIGHTER A KNOCKING B RIGHT OUTTA THE HEX!"
Gin forgot to breathe.
The heat. The stink. The sound of the crowd.
He was loving every second of it
And this wasn't even the main event.
This... this was the real thing.
The place where legends bled.
The place where I'd get my answers.
"You look shocked, Gin." Jiro chuckled beside him. "Now you see why I keep coming here. Me and Kenta? We never miss a fight."
Kenta gave a faint smirk.
"That match wasn't even that good."
Jiro raised a brow. "Then why were you leaning forward like a kid?"
"My back hurts."
Jiro snorted. "You? Of all people? You'd be the last one I'd believe about back pain."
Gin pointed toward the ring, confused.
"How did she do that? She just spat boiling liquid and sent her opponent flying out of the Hex."
Tabaki raised a skeptical brow. "I doubt he's the one to explain that, Sir Gin."
Jiro chuckled. "Not me. Obviously Kenta's the master at this stuff."
They all turned toward Kenta who was already deep in thought, eyes fixed on the aftermath in the arena. When he spoke, it was with the calm precision of a teacher lecturing in the middle of a war zone.
Most hadn't noticed, but the cloaked girl seated farther away had been listening intently the entire match. Her presence was quiet but focused, almost like she was studying the fight on a different level alongside them.
Beside her, a silent guard leaned in from time to time, discreetly whispering updates into her ear passing along anything she might have missed from what the nearby group was discussing about the fight.
Kenta spoke calmly.
"First rule in Pulse combat: know your opponent's weaknesses and their stamina limits.
Kenta's voice cut through the noise like a scalpel.
"Fighter A didn't just rely on brute force she played the terrain like a chessboard. From the start, she was calculating. She studied the hexring's layout, tracked her opponent's footwork, and measured the gap between them and the edge. She knew exactly how much pressure her internal pulse could generate to release that liquid blast. Every clash, every feint it was all building to this one final angle."
He gestured pointing towards the screen as the replay slowed down the dome echoing with the roar of the crowd.
"See that? She kept engaging in close combat not because she couldn't fight from a distance, but to manipulate her opponent's positioning. She baited her into backing up just far enough… and then boom one well-timed shot with just the right amount of pressure, and she sent her flying."
Gin could actually see it happening now. As he started to grasp the rhythm, the momentum, the flow of the match it reminded him of how he used to calculate his fights back in his old world. The instincts were the same. But the precision and speed in this world? That was on another level entirely.
Kenta, already stepping into his role as the de facto lecturer, continued his explanation
""Her opponent actually had the upper hand. That ability hovering for up to two minutes? That's huge. She should've used the height advantage to rain down projectiles. Instead… she just floated there to catch her breath. Big mistake."
"The other girl took full advantage of that mistake. And the terrain."
Kenta pointed to the hexagonal arena, then gestured toward a secondary screen now glowing above the main replay display. This one showed a slowed-down angle highlighting the slick, reflective sheen on the arena floor.
"That greenish liquid wasn't just hot it was sticky and from what I see also slippery. Fighter A had been coating the floor with it the entire match, turning the ground into a trap. Made it slippery as hell."
Kenta's voice stayed level, clinical. "That's why fighter B stayed airborne. Fighter A forced her opponent to stay grounded on a surface she controlled."
Everyone of them beside him stared at him, stunned. Once again, Kenta's calm, surgical analysis had sliced straight through the chaos.
"I thought you said you weren't even watching," Jiro muttered.
Kenta only smirked.
Then came a new voice, a girl's voice, respectful but unfamiliar.
"Excuse me… Grandpa."
Not a personal "grandpa." More like how a stranger would say it with polite distance.
She gestured slightly toward the replay.
The cloaked girl tilted her chin toward the screen. "Also... the floating girl Fighter B? She didn't just miscalculate Fighter A's attack.
She forgot that heat rises.
She didn't realize that the longer she hovered, the more heat gathered beneath her. She trapped herself above a terrain getting hotter every second. That's why she panicked. She wasn't just outmaneuvered. She was outsmarted."
That greenish liquid on the floor wasn't just slippery, it was boiling. As it evaporated, it left behind a sticky residue that gradually hardened.
At first, it looked like she had room to land. But the more time passed, the more the surface changed slippery in some spots, sticky in others, and eventually solidifying into patches she couldn't predict. Meanwhile, the rising heat from the evaporating liquid narrowed her options from below.
She was being cornered without even realizing it.
The floor became a shifting trap one she never accounted for."
Even Kenta paused,eyebrows raised. glancing her way.
The others exchanged glances.
Who is she?
Kenta blinked once, then gave a soft chuckle. "I like her. She's observant."
The girl turned to her guard seated beside Tabaki.
"Switch seats," she said softly.
A moment later, without question, the guard slid over. She moved into the spot he'd just vacated, scooting into the seat beside Tabaki
who immediately forgot how to breathe.
Then she added, almost idly,
"The tiles are metal hexagons exactly 1.2 meters wide. It was listed at the entrance. So Fighter A had a lot of ground to cover just to convince Fighter B."
She tapped a finger lightly against the armrest.
"To estimate the size of the hexring, you just count the tiles and do the math. Easy."
Tabaki blinked, eyes flicking to the side of her cloak that still shadowed her face.
"How many tiles did you count?"
She turned slightly in his direction, her cloak still obscuring just enough.
"Thirty-five across the center. That makes it about 42 meters wide flat side to flat side."
She let that hang, then added,
"Same across the other direction, more or less. Regular hex layout. So yeah about 42 by 42 meters of open field."